October 11, 2024 • 60 mins
On Episode 78 of the Daebak K-Rambles Podcast, Jess and guests Jenn and Marisa from The KThree review Memoir of a Murderer (2017), starring Sul Kyung-gu, Kim Nam-gil, and Seolhyun.
Jess, Jenn, and Marisa discuss this mystery thriller, talking through the other movies it reminded us of like Memento and Shutter Island, the portrayal of Alzheimer's, the lackluster performance from Seolhyun, the scenes that thrilled us or made us scratch our concave heads (IYKYK), and more.
GUEST: The KThree – Jenn and Marisa
Instagram: @thekthree
Twitter: @TheKThree
Facebook: The KThree
YouTube: @TheKThree
Intro Music Credit: “Golden Coconut Club” by Tearliner, from the Cheese in the Trap OST. Used with permission from the artist.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:19):
I'm Jessica and this is Tiba K Rambles where a couple of
friends review Korean dramas except it is spooky season and
we are back for another movie review.
For this episode I am joined by Jen and Marissa from the K3
YouTube and podcast. How are you guys?
Good. We're good.
(00:39):
Thanks. It's been a minute since you
guys have been on the podcast. The last time you guys were here
was for the Healer review, whichwas a ton of fun, but I thought
it would be fun to bring you guys back to do a review of the
movie Memoir of a Murderer. So how have you guys been?
What have you guys been up to? If you guys want to share with
(01:01):
the Tibock audience what you guys maybe have been watching in
the past week or so, K dramas, Kmovies, what have you.
Well, it's now mid-september andthere was a post lovely runner
lull for a lot of people. So I'm currently watching Love
Next Door and Queen Wu and I don't know, my slate feels
(01:23):
really full right now. Also No Gain, no love, and it's
a it's been a pretty enjoyable fall.
It's not the obsessions that I was hoping for, but I'm fairly
happy right now. Got you.
Got you. Yeah, I'm also watching Love
Next Door. I think I'm on episode 5.
I have like no desire to keep going, but I have just, I
(01:48):
prematurely said I was going to do a podcast episode on it.
So I am going to finish the showin a timely manner.
So that's on my docket too. But.
I don't know. I see people dropping it left
and right. Yeah, it's yeah.
Anyway, Jen, how about you? I am with you Jess.
(02:10):
Love next door is got like one more week to give me something
to to anchor on or I'm dropping it.
But I am loving no gain no love and Cinderella at 2:00 AM.
If you haven't tried that littlenugget out yet.
I'm loving that one. And then I also am loving
Blackout. If you are into crime and
(02:32):
thrillers. That one's fantastic.
It's on Hulu, It just dropped. They dropped the 1st 8 episodes
on Hulu. And it's a little bit their
release schedules a little wonkyon Hulu because they dropped
them all at the same time and then nothing since September
1st. But it does look like the whole
series is going to be there. So yeah, but it's it's
spectacular. It's so good.
I like that. I like that blackout.
(02:52):
OK, yeah, I have a handful of dramas that are on my Finish
2024 list. That's just a personal list that
I want to finish these dramas because I've been completely out
of the loop for most of the yearand the year hasn't been that
strong is what I'm hearing and what I'm feeling in the air and
the ether. So I'll add that one to the
(03:14):
list, including I'll I'll give No Gain No Love a shot as well
as Cinderella at 2 AMA shot because those two sound really
fun and cute. So yeah, I would also recommend
The Frog and if you're tuning into this podcast because you
you like a thriller and you likesome violence and you like a
good looking Korean project product, then I highly recommend
(03:37):
The Frog on Netflix. Yes, with Komenshi, I think is
in that show. Yeah, I've heard good things
about that show too. There's like a handful of shows
here and there that like pop up and I'm like, oh, I got to add
that to my finished 2024 list, which is not very long,
admittedly. So anyway, we are going to just
(03:59):
do a a review of Memoir of a Murderer.
It is a feature length film. We are not going to be covering
AK drama, as I said before. But before we do, if this is
your first time listening, thankyou.
Go ahead and subscribe on your favorite podcast.
We're on Apple Podcast, Spotify,Google Podcasts and many more.
And if you like us, please give us a review on Apple Podcasts
(04:20):
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Patreon page is patreon.com debakpod.
(04:41):
Once again, the new Patreon is patreon.com debakpod.
Shout out to our patrons Janet, Curtis, Bale, CD, Alana, Grace,
Lorna, Adya, Sami, Caitlin, Julia, Michelle, Tami, Aaron,
Martha, Delphia, Maria, Kelly and Fatima.
Love you guys. You guys are so wonderful.
Thank you so much for your support.
(05:03):
All right, so I'm back to my roots here.
As I said before, back to some movies.
Let's get into it. This was a first time watch for
me. The IMDb synopsis for this movie
reads real quick. A former serial killer with
Alzheimer's fights to protect his daughter from her psychotic
boyfriend. That's it done.
(05:23):
Boom out. That was it, that was it.
That was all IMDb gave you. That's hilarious.
Literally. It So this movie was released on
September 7th, 2017, September 8th in the States.
It's an hour and 58 minutes long, basically two hours long.
It's directed by Wanchinon who'salso directed The Suspect in
(05:45):
2013 with Kong Yu. 7 Days from O7.
He was a writer for Rampant from2018.
It's a zombie movie with Hyun Bin which I really enjoyed.
I don't know if you guys have seen some other stuff from this
director but. Rampant.
For sure rampant. Yeah, saw rampant.
I actually saw a suspect. OK.
(06:05):
That was during my Gong Yu Kong Yu phase, so I saw.
I watched that and Rampant for sure.
This movie was written, it was 2writers.
The first writer is Huang Zhou Yun and when I saw the list of
movies that this person has written I was like oh shit.
So a screenwriter for Old Boy Masquerade and Rampant.
(06:30):
So this makes a lot of sense. So worked with the director.
This definitely had an old boy like feel to.
It for sure on your first sight.On your first sight, when I saw
Old Boy I about fell back like 5feet.
So yeah, I'm assuming you guys have watched Old Boy, the Pak
Tanuk 2003 film. I have not, but I read all the
(06:51):
synopsises for it, so I know I know what the big reveal.
Is God. This felt very old, Boy asked.
OK, I'm not sure. I have sat through the movie.
It's horrifying, OK? I guess I'm the only one who's
been traumatized here. So last year and it's on the
Patreon feed. Actually, I went and I did the
(07:13):
whole Vengeance trilogy from PakChon Luke and I reviewed it
solo. I just like decided to dive deep
and pop my Pak Chung Cherry, so to speak and like.
Did all three movies. You went hard.
And when I got to old boy, I waslike, have I was I don't know
(07:33):
what to what to say. I the experience of watching old
boy with traumatized me. Yeah, I there there's I'm still
reeling. There's nothing but trauma to
say about that. Literally.
Yeah, literally. That's it.
So that's it. The fact that this writer
contributed to my trauma. Right.
Says a lot. They wrote Masquerade from 2012
(07:55):
which is an excellent excellent.It's a movie with Ebengun.
Yeah, that's a good one. That's really good.
Really good, and if you've seen the show The Crown Clown, this
is the movie. That it's based on.
I love the crown clown. Yes.
It's the same. It's the same king and clown,
(08:16):
yes. Yes.
Correct. I love it.
So moving on to the other screenwriter, Kimyonga wrote.
And then I again fell back 10 feet because when I saw this
movie on here, I was like, Oh myGod.
It's the movie that started off for me.
They wrote A Moment to Remember from 2004, which I'm just sorry,
(08:41):
like, I need a minute, Chelsea. OK, I thought OK, because I was
like, Oh my God, this movie is what started my K drama journey.
Wow. I understand that.
Yes, it's a classic. Yeah.
Yeah. If you want some heartbreak,
then definitely watch the 2004 movie A Moment to Remember.
(09:03):
It makes a lot of sense because of the memory aspect of that
movie that ties in with this movie.
Memoir of a murderer. Yeah.
So this movie stars Sol Kyungu who plays Byongsu, the main
character. His daughter is only played by
(09:24):
Sol Hyon who I can't remember what K pop group she's part of.
Not AOA. It is AOA.
It is AOA. AOA and then Kim Nangil plays
Teju the psychotic boyfriend from the IMDb synopsis.
And then we have a few and then we have a few other bit players
(09:47):
like Odell SU plays Byung Man, the cop best friend E Byung Jun
plays the poetry instructor, which it's hard to like
visualize these people. But once you see like a picture
of them, you're like, Oh my God,I've seen these people in like a
million things. It's the Ajishi crew.
It's literally the Ajishi crew. And then Kimmei Yun plays young
(10:08):
Maria character Kimi Yun from Snowdrop this year.
Lovely runner. Runner which blew her up.
Everybody's knows her now. So that is our cast.
Oh God. That was her.
Yeah, that was her. It was like blinking.
You'll miss it. Oh God, I didn't recognize her
at all. Yeah, yeah.
(10:28):
And I've seen her in like 4 dramas.
I know as an adult I didn't evenrecognize her though.
You guys haven't mentioned Kilhey Young like she is like
she is like the how many to end all how many's like she does
everything from nuns to like theworst mom on the planet.
It's something in the rain. Literally I so the mom from
something in the rain is in thisand she plays Maria, the sister.
(10:53):
And like, I guess that's all we'll say about that.
We're in the non spoiler sectionright now.
But like, yeah, she's in this. When I saw her, I was like a
nice nun character. Whoa, that's not heard of that
before. Well, you clearly did not watch
Midnight in the Midnight in the Hag one.
No, at midnight romance in the Hag one.
(11:14):
She was delightful. Bless her, OK?
She was she was delightful and she then she had scenes with we
had June when he was her son andsomething in the rain and all of
us were like, this is so surrealbecause she's not yelling at
him. It was great.
Right, exactly, exactly. There's history here.
All right, so we are at the end of this general section.
(11:36):
What did you guys think of this movie Memoir of a Murderer?
I think 1 of you had already seen it before, the other had
not. Yeah, so I remember watching
this, I think I think it was 2018, like as soon as it came
out on his streaming site. And I have memories of watching
it on a plane. Like I must have downloaded it
somehow. Watching it on a plane going, Is
(11:57):
this OK? Because I just kept going and
then it got so violent. I'm like, are there children
around me? But I, I really enjoyed it.
I watched it for Kim Nam Gill and stayed for his his kind of
duel with Silkyungyu. And it just I mean, that IMDb
(12:22):
synopsis just just barely scratches the surface.
Yeah, I know it was like AI generated like could be 50 other
films released that year. But it I mean, it begs the
question, who knows a serial killer better than another
serial killer? And I just thought that was such
a fascinating twist on the genre.
Yeah, yeah. It was enjoyable and visually of
(12:45):
just stunning. I thought that the way the
director used visuals and editing techniques and the
music, I thought it was amazing.The story itself fell flat, kind
of flat for me because I was expecting more of a twist, for
lack of a better word, there at the end.
And the twist was almost that there was no twist.
(13:06):
So, yeah, that was that was my my overall thought that I was, I
was a little bit disappointed because I all the visual cues
that they gave US-led me down a different path.
So yeah, I I agree with you. I think, Well, I agree that I
thought that there was going to be a twist because this was my
first time watching this movie and again, I'm scarred with Pak
(13:28):
Januk dramas. I've scarred with the, you know,
punching holes. And so I came into this thinking
there's gonna be a twist. It's gonna there's gonna be a
gotcha in the. Movie yeah, I was expecting
we're not going spoilers so I'llI'll hold that it's a spoiler
spoiler section. Yeah, yeah, well, I'll cue us
when we're in the spoiler. Section, but sorry, no, no, it's
(13:49):
fine. Yeah, I was excited to watch
this movie because also I came in blind.
Like I didn't even read the IMDbsynopsis.
I like literally just press playand was like, OK, surprise me,
Memoir of a murderer. I was like, OK, they're not
going to surprise us by who's the murderer because it's going
to be whoever is telling us their life story, their memoir.
(14:12):
But I was like, how what? What else?
Like what else is the story going to be about?
I was surprised that it had. It felt a lot like Memento in
that like this person is fighting their mind, their
fractured mind, and how there islarge quantities of time missing
(14:35):
and they are trying to piece together what they've forgotten.
And I really liked that aspect of it, that the editing and the
way that certain things are shotmakes you confused.
And that's what I imagine experiencing dementia or
Alzheimer's is like. Unfortunately, I have direct
(14:57):
experience with dementia and Alzheimer's in my life with
family members who have gone through the disease and
progressed through it, and you just have to laugh to keep from
crying. There's a lot of liberties that
they took, I would say with it, but I personally don't feel like
it was Alzheimer's or dementia. It was just brain damage.
(15:20):
Right. It was just brain damage that
progressed throughout the 17 years and, you know, it
manifests tested in this really unique way with like his little
ticks and his episodes and things like that.
It wasn't necessarily, you know,the slow ravaging of time that
is typical of the brain shrinkage.
(15:42):
Sure. Of dementia, things like that.
Right. I mean, the fact that they're
letting him drive. Right, like they had.
The big I was like. Drive live at home.
Yeah. You know, like they have like
maybe that's a maybe no. No, he was out here performing
his daily functions as if he wasn't severely impaired.
(16:03):
He had his business running still with the veterinary
business, injecting little cats and animals.
I was like, he they're letting him do all this, that he should
be done, like this business should be sold by now, like the
way that he's at. Yeah.
So they took a lot of liberties.And I don't know if it was a
(16:27):
it's a cultural thing as well with Korea, I don't know, like
is it just a movie or is it a little bit of both?
So I think that's. Part of it that your lead, your
protagonist is an unreliable narrator exactly and an anti
hero. So it's just, I don't, I, I
(16:50):
would like to think that most people with Alzheimer's in Korea
are taken care of in some way that doesn't involve their
teenage daughter taking care of them at home in the countryside
with still going out on dates. With a recorder as his only
device for remembering. Like those are like the recorder
(17:10):
was the tattoos and memento likeit's yeah.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, it's got its little things.
Actually jumping on yes anding your memento.
I kept thinking it was, I kept thinking were going to get like
a Shutter Island situation. And I was like waiting for the
big Shutter Island reveal. And then maybe that's why I was
like, oh, all right, yeah, that did not happen.
(17:33):
Because. Of all the, all the cutting, all
the editing and the way we wouldgo from one location to another
location just very quickly. And like there was that one
scene where he was talking to his cop buddy and then all of a
sudden his cop buddy just got upand his cop car just rolled up
and he just got into it and he left like as if he just called
an Uber that arrived. It was like stuff like that made
me think that there was, it was all going on in his mind.
(17:56):
That's all. So that made me give me very
much a Shutter Island idea, kindof like what you said, Memento.
It just made me think that again, as also, as Marissa said,
just not a reliable narrator. Like what are we actually
witnessing here? Because everything seems to be
there's no real flow to it. It's just kind of jumping all
over the place. And so that's, that was what, as
(18:16):
I was watching it, I kept waiting for that big reveal.
Yeah, I'm not sure if we ever get it and it starts.
Right. This isn't much of A spoiler,
but the movie starts where how it ends, and then we find out
like all the in between bits, like what happens to get us to
that part that we saw at the very beginning of the movie.
And yeah, I thought that, you know, with his shoes being on,
(18:40):
you know, the wrong foot and stuff.
I was like, oh, yeah, this is going to be like a shit show.
Like some twist is going to happen.
And then at one point in the movie, we even in the movie, we
see his shoes are placed in the wrong backwards.
So I'm like, oh, that's another clue.
And I'm like, no, it's not. Wait.
Yeah, I but I thought, you know,overall it was a very I mean,
(19:03):
there was maybe the movie is slightly too long for what it
is. Maybe the movie isn't doing
anything crazy with the cinematography.
Like this isn't like Roger Deakins here, but that's fine.
But I really appreciated how it is setting a tone.
It does have like the bamboo forest, which is really nice to
(19:25):
look at. It's very picturesque.
I feel like there's something too it's.
Creepy as hell. And it's creepy as shit.
Creepy as hell like did was it just me or did he have it like
all gritted off as if he was like I have dead bodies here
like like he's being super what is?
It just with. It right?
I know, it was so creepy. And these small towns are always
(19:47):
empty. Right.
Like he's dragged that many bodies.
I mean, he's a serial killer. There's a there's.
He's left a lot in his wake and no ones figured it out.
Right. Like they're not like there's
not like there's 30 missing people that we can't account
for. It's like.
I know I'd like the friend. Well, anyway, we'll get into
(20:09):
like a little bit more in the spoilers section, but how did
you guys feel about the acting performances from everybody?
I know that one of you wanted towatch it because of Kim Nam Gil
specifically. So how'd you guys feel about
them? Yes, Kim Nam Gil, he's such a
chameleon. He, I mean, if you look at him
in Fiery Priest where he's just this kind of wackadoo, you know,
(20:32):
martial arts wielding priest with this weird sense of humor
and then you know, some of his melodramas and then you've got
this, which is what did IMDb call him Psychotic boyfriend?
Psychotic boyfriend. Yeah, yeah, he was.
Definitely. He was definitely the definition
of that because you would. But that's the where the
(20:53):
unreliable narrator comes in because.
And I don't think the film went far enough with this.
But like, should I believe him? Because he's so charming and
he's so handsome and he's so nice to this young woman.
So I really enjoyed his performance.
So Kyung Gu was, you know, I think the last thing I saw him
in recently was Kill Buck Soon. Yeah.
On Netflix. I'm like, is this the same
(21:14):
actor? He's such a like, lost Ajushi
grandpa with, you know, brain damage from I don't know how
many car accidents. But he.
I thought was very compelling and but I do have to say Saul
Young I thought was a weak link who played his daughter was a
weak link in this film. OK.
All right. Yeah.
(21:35):
Jen, do you, do you agree with the assessment on?
I absolutely agree with her assessment.
I came to it. I would never have watched this
if you had not asked us to, or if I was on a huge Kim Nam
Gilkek. And it was lovely to see him
play kind of outside of his usual repertoire of characters
he usually plays. But I feel like there was
(21:57):
definitely a theme there that he's kind of got that little.
He's got a little bit of a sassystreak that I think in all his
characters came through. I on one hand believed 100% that
he was a serial killer. And yet in the same in the same
vein, also was like, there's no way because again, unreliable
narrator, but I thought he did anice job of threading that
needle throughout most of the most of the the movie.
(22:17):
And this is my first time seeingso Kungu.
So he was new to me. I have nothing really to base it
on. But I really believe, like you
had said earlier, Jess, that if he did portray, I thought the
ravages of brain damage very well.
Like I was as confused as he was.
And I thought he portrayed how confusing and disorienting that
was. I thought you did a really great
(22:38):
job with that. And then, yeah, that.
I mean, I thought the daughter was, you know, she was, she
seemed like in a different show,to be perfectly honest, until
the last act. I felt like she was kind of in a
like some some like ROM kami slice of life, picturesque, our
bluesy kind of of drama. And so, you know, I mean, she
(23:00):
never really I mean, again, unreliable narrator, but we
never heard her talk about her mom who just suddenly
disappeared. We never heard we never really
got we didn't really learn much about her.
So I don't know if that's part of it where we just didn't get,
we just didn't have enough with her except his, our main
protagonist's view of her, right?
So that's all we got. So maybe that maybe she did what
(23:22):
she was supposed to do, but I didn't feel like it was horribly
dynamic. Oh, I see it.
Didn't Take Me Out, but it I didn't think it was horrible.
I see. I can, I can agree with that,
that she was very two-dimensional, but that's how
he's, I guess viewed her is justthat's just his daughter and she
comes and goes and she feeds me and then that's it.
Like, there's not much there to it.
(23:45):
And yeah, it's only until the third act that I'm like, OK,
like we could, we're getting a little, you know, stakes here in
something. Yeah.
From her. Also the the woman in the poetry
class, I've seen her in a bunch of traumas.
She's she's played a. Shaman, she's played, she's
played, you know, she's always alittle overdressed.
(24:08):
The heels are always a little high, the lipsticks always a
little red, redder than everyoneelse, and.
As soon as she's so. Funny and actually that was
that's what I was surprised thatthere was humor in this film.
And so you need someone like KimNam Gill to to carry that off or
someone is probably very experienced.
So Kyungu. So to have this character I
(24:30):
should just look up her name because.
It's Huang Sook Jung. Yeah, so you kind of the moment
you see her, you know what's gonna happen to her character.
Oh my God, the second she went chasing after the first time,
like I'm sorry pumpkin, it was good knowing.
Marked for Danielle. On you.
Yeah, there's 2 serial killers in this film.
You're not getting out alive. You are not making it to the
(24:52):
third act, my friend. You were gonna trigger the third
act. Thank you very much.
Nice to meet you. Oh my God.
I guess that leads into because you guys are talking about
comedic bits of the movie and comedic characters like this
one. Did the movie scare you at all?
Did it thrill you at all? Hell yeah.
I thought it. I did, yeah.
(25:13):
Maybe that's because I was firsttime I watched it.
I was on a plane like. Yeah.
Feeling like being 35? 1000 that'll get shit real, real
good. I have to say it did not, I
mean, again, maybe it's just because, you know, I, it was not
one of my first Korean thrillersthat I've watched.
(25:34):
And I feel like I also did this,unfortunately, with Train to
Pusan where everyone was like, Oh my God, the zombies are
terrifying. And I'm like, I can't watch
that. And then I watched Kingdom and
then I watched something else with zombies.
And then I'm like, all right, I need to watch Train to Pusan and
then I'm. Like, oh, you like backed?
Into it. These aren't that scary.
What do you mean? It's because I've, you know, so
I kind of ruined it for myself because that the speed and the,
(25:58):
you know, the dynamic of those zombies at that time is the
first time we've kind of seen that.
But I had already experienced itthrough the dramas.
And I feel like that's kind of what happened to me here, that I
kind of was like, I was always waiting for something to happen.
And then it, you know, I, I, so I feel like, yeah.
And I'm also watching Blackout right now.
And so Blackout is much more like, oh, my God.
(26:20):
Oh my God, that happened. Oh my God.
Because it's kind. It's actually weirdly kind of
similar because he is accused ofmurdering two of his classmates
when he's 19 years old. And it's the reason he and he
can't remember because they claim he drank so much he
blacked out, hence the title. And so he ends up in jail for 10
years, gets out, goes back to his hometown, they all hate him,
(26:42):
obviously, and things start happening and he's trying
desperately to get his memory back, to learn what happened
back then. And so it is, and it might.
And again, it might be just likeI said, it might be a this movie
might have been a casualty of mewatching Blackout at the same
time. I wonder because I watched this
in 2018. I think I started watching K
(27:04):
dramas in 2016, so still fairly new and I don't think I'd seen
that many thrillers at that. And this is also like pre
Parasite, which is the twist of all twists in Korean films.
So it's yeah. So I can see like if it's on, if
you watch it later, it doesn't have the.
Yeah. Oomph that you're waiting.
(27:24):
For right, especially I mean like for real parasite, you're
like what? That was, yeah.
I didn't feel like this movie had that what moment at all?
I was just kind of like, oh. Yeah, it was like, it was
definitely like a oh. Really.
Seriously, that's me. When it finally ended, I went.
(27:48):
I wish you guys could see our faces right now because we are
just making these crazy faces, as we say, 20 different ways.
But yeah, I agree with you guys that I was fully expecting to be
thrilled and scared. And I think I only was scared
one time. And it was a jump scare that we
(28:08):
could talk about in the spoiler section.
And then the rest of the movie, I was like, you know how you go
through a haunted house and you're like peeking around the
corner? You're like, I see the dark
corner, I'm expecting it. And then you look with the
flashlight and nothing's there. That was like a movie.
Wait. I'm fine.
I'm good. All right.
(28:29):
Oh, Nope, not there either. Oh.
Nope, you're like it's just the dark corner, like, you know,
yeah, it you it was fine. There's nothing inherently bad
about the movie and I do feel like it's maybe I watched it at
the wrong time in my K movie journey, where I've watched
(28:53):
already a lot of things and I'vealready watched all the Pak
Chung nooks and I've watched thepong junior right the train to
Busan I. Mean, coming off of a Pak Chung
Wuk marathon, this one was not gonna was not gonna meet.
It's not gonna touch. At all.
Not even at all. Not even at all.
Yeah. It was gonna be.
(29:13):
It was gonna be lacking. Yeah.
I, but I think, you know, the whole reason for doing this,
this this spooky season and for doing movies are obviously this
this year is because I didn't have enough time to watch an
entire spooky drama. So I thought, you know, let's
cover movies. I love movies anyways.
And a lot of Korean watchers don't like spooky stuff.
(29:35):
They don't like scary movies. They don't like horror genre as
a genre. And so I always like to
highlight these things and I'm like, you know, let's, you know,
get out of our comfort zone. Every so often it is spooky
season. This is the perfect time to like
try something new. And it's only two hours and
we're all three of us are sayingyou can do it.
(29:56):
You can watch memoir of a murderer and you'll be fine.
I mean, let's. Let's be honest, it's the length
of this whole movie is like a length of like a love love next
door episode, for God's sake. So oh.
So get me started on the length of episodes in Cage.
I don't know. Anyway, I think it's worth
trying and I think we're going to close out the non spoiler
(30:19):
section which is giving our scores out of fives hold you
bottles. So whoever wants to go first
score out of five, soldier by 5 being the best, 0 being not so
great. You can give half half bottles
as well half scores. I'd give it a 3 1/2.
Oh my God, So was that. Yeah.
Exactly. What I was going to give it, All
right, all right. Yeah.
(30:41):
All right. I think I will go ahead and give
it, I don't know, just to be contrary and fresh, I'll give it
4. But I am known to be that person
that changes my score in letterbox like months later.
I'd be like, why did I give thata four?
Why did I give that a four and ahalf?
And I'll change it to be lower. I almost never change something
(31:03):
to be higher. It's like the recency bias and
the high of watching something will wear off and then I'll be
like, whoa, what was I thinking there?
And then I'll drop a score. So I'm going to go ahead and
give my initial 4 Sochu bottles for this and it will likely drop
to 3 1/2 later. OK.
(31:23):
But I'll give it four. It's solid, It's not perfect,
it's very watchable, it's very atmospheric.
And if you've never watched Memento or these other movies
that we're referencing, then it's probably going to get you
right. Like some of these like tricks
and editing things are going to get you.
So I, I think it's, it's worth it for for a certain audience
(31:46):
members. So with that being said, we are
going to get into the spoiler section and talk a little bit
more in detail about this movie right after this The Greatest
Trick. Houston, we have a problem.
I am the father. I see dead people.
The devil ever pulled. Pay no attention to that man
behind the curtain. Was convincing the world you
(32:07):
can't handle the. It didn't exist, no.
What's in the box? All right, we're on the other
side of spoilers. I know we kind of did a few
spoilers in the other in the nonspoiler section, but we are
going to do a little bit of a deep dive here on the memoir of
a murderer film. Jen, I hear you have a question
for us. I do and I'm this is the this is
(32:29):
the big Kahuna spoiler of the whole movie.
But can someone explain the ending to me?
OK, I had, I was. So I literally had to go to the
Googler to be like, someone explained the ending to me
because I don't know what just happened at all.
Like is is I had spent the wholemovie being like, is he actually
(32:50):
Kim Nam Gill and this is just him reliving all of his murders?
OK, No, because they actually fought and people died.
So that's not it. Is Kim Nam Gill actually his
son? And then the Locket thing
happened and then it was like, is he just trapped in his own
memory? Like I yeah, it's the last one.
He's. Trapped in his own.
In. His own memory, yeah.
He, he really ingrained in him the knee.
(33:12):
It's almost like Inception, where it's like you're waiting
for a train and then that character can't get out of her
head. It's waiting for.
The world to fall over. Yeah, we're just waiting, right?
So Marianne Cotillard's character and Inception, like
can't get out of her head that her world isn't real even after
she comes to out of the dream. So the same thing is kind of
(33:33):
happening to him, that even after the danger is well past
and he's now in an assisted living facility or some
institutionalized or something, after this whole thing blows
over, he's still left with I need to save her from whatever
that character's name was, like Teju.
Oh yeah, Kim Mintego. Kim Teju, I need to save her
(33:57):
from Kim Teju. I have to kill Kim Teju.
Hi. That's how I interpreted it.
I mean, no, thank you. Okay, that's how I interpreted
it, but I was hoping for something a little juicier than
that because I was like, I don'tknow where this.
Okay, now The thing is, I don't know how the hell he got out of
the facility. Well, that's I don't think he
did. I think he was in we're gonna go
with that. I think he was in his own mind
(34:20):
and the tunnel. I kind of felt like the tunnel
was like his brain of some. Sort, yeah.
That's kind of how I interpretedoriginally.
And then we got the whole movie and then I was really like
boggled by the end of. Those because there was, I don't
know how he got, because he alsosomehow got his hands on
medication that he was going to inject himself with a like a
(34:40):
lethal injection. And I was like.
That's Was that real? How is that?
Even happening in a secure facility.
I don't think so I think that's his mind and he, you know it,
it's what's keeping him alive. This need to go after him 'cause
that tunnel, every time you see it in the film represents some
(35:01):
sort of fantasy or alternate reality or some, you know, time
travel portal the tunnel the. Tunnel.
It's the tunnel. It's the tunnel I would have
enjoyed a lot. It was time travel.
OK. Yeah, yeah.
I'm glad that we talked that over because I thought that was
a real tunnel and he was out like off the res and I couldn't
(35:25):
wrap my head around that part, like the logistics of him
actually making it out. I don't think so.
Well, I don't think so either and I but I also thought that
bookending the movie with that also a on one hand makes a ton
of sense and yet on another handmakes me more not confused but
really just solidifies the unreliable narrator of what did
(35:48):
we just watch. For two hours, yeah.
Yeah, I think it just got a little existential at the end,
you know? You know, I like concrete
things, Marissa. I know you do.
I'm a Virgo. I need it to be concrete like
the earth. This.
Yeah, this was like, not that this was like that at all.
(36:11):
It. Wasn't no Jenny is an
explanation. What happening?
But see, I think that for me, I enjoy like having the detective
that kind of walks you through it and explains it and kind of
gives you those guideposts whereyou're just like, like
Inception, like Inception had kind of someone that took us
through all the different things.
I don't remember who that was. I don't remember all the
(36:32):
details, but I found it to be satisfying because it was like,
hey, did you notice this? This.
This is important, you know? Yeah, I mean.
There's always these like exposition, exposition dumps in
the movie. And like Leo does one that's one
of my favourites in Inception where he just like he says like,
how did we get here? Do you remember coming here?
(36:56):
And the whole world starts to shake and he's like, this is
your first experience and shareddreaming right now.
And it's like, that is a crazy moment.
And you know, he explains stuff.Oh my God, right after.
That that's funny. We're talking Inception and
Shutter Island, which is also a Leo Leo movie.
Leo, Leo clearly is my guidepostguy for wacky movies.
(37:18):
Like, I just needed him to make a cameo and be like, Jen, this
is what you should be paying attention to.
It's like, thank you, Leo. Thank you.
Oh. My God.
So I appreciated the fact that he he made-up the sister like
the sister was a hallucination. Yeah.
I thought that was so cruel. I was like, oh shit, like that
(37:39):
was a twist. I felt that was that landed
pretty well. It did.
It did. I was expecting, I don't know.
I think it landed and then I went, oh, well, we can't do that
twice. So that's the twist of him not
being the OK, all right. Yeah, that was a good twist.
And the the whole replaying the whole scene of him putting his
(38:00):
daughter in the taxi and then playing the reality, what really
happened was like the reality was so much worse.
I'm like, he's literally puttingher in the car with her
psychotic boyfriend. Serial killer.
Yes, right. And he thinks he's putting her
in a taxi. It's it's just so.
Oh my. God, I will say that was
probably the best, the best moment in the whole movie for
(38:21):
me, because that was that was the kind of shit I love when I
watch. He's like, Oh my.
No. Yeah, like that.
So I wanted more of that. His unraveling there is so like,
you're like, Oh my God, he's like fucked it up, didn't he?
Because like he it wasn't even that he forgot that she's dating
(38:41):
a serial killer. It's that she he actively like,
put her in harm's way and shovedher off to the guy that he's
trying to keep her away from. Yeah, you know that little
recorder probably should have started every day with your
sister is not around anymore. That recorder could have been
(39:02):
much more handy. Just really good, completely
brutal, more handy. I just got off watching.
It's OK. That's love.
I don't know if you guys have seen that K drama, but there's a
similar twist in that in that show.
And so when the sister wasn't there, I was like, oh, not
again, not again, not twice in one week, twice in one week.
(39:25):
I was like. Yeah, there are some tropes that
just don't come around that often, and that's the.
Right, like the mental illness it's struggling with some sort
of psychosis does not happen that often.
It's it's kind of rare nowadays.So yeah, man, I got bamboozled
(39:46):
twice in one week. That's rough.
That's rough. It's rough.
It's rough out year, bro. I also, I thought that the the
show, I thought that the movie kind of hit its stride when it
started to delve into the theme of nature versus nurture for
serial killers. Did you guys feel any type of
(40:06):
way about that? I did, but I also thought it was
completely out of left field that Kim Nam Gill had an entire
divot bro his skull. You should have seen me at work
today when he started fixing hishair.
So the whole thing is he actually starts fixing his hair
in the mirror, in the mirror almost like obsessively.
(40:30):
And I'm like OK, weird. Then he takes his whole half
skull off. His whole head off.
Like and I was like, the fuck isgoing?
On like this. Did not.
This was not in my bingo card atall.
No, like it was like, again, going back to maybe it's all
just brain damage. Brain damage.
Clearly, yes, clearly when you are missing 1/4 of your cranium,
(40:55):
maybe a little bit of maybe a touch of brain damage.
But just a touch, just a little touch sprinkling.
Just a NAB. Her visa.
Shaking her head. She's just like, I can't.
The amount of abuse in this in this film, Oh my God.
I know. It's like, I mean you.
(41:16):
Can't the way that it. Starts like with our lead silk
young Gu like, you know, he starts killing people who air
quotes deserve it. I'm like I'm like, OK, sure.
So we can feel good about him. We'll keep following him because
he's really, you know, he's getting rid of people.
Dexter. Total noble Dexter type.
(41:38):
Yeah. And then it's just it was a lot.
He killed a lot of people, Like a lot of people.
It started going like from childabusers and like people that
beat their dog to death. So like animal abusers down to
like this person looked at me wrong and they annoyed me and I
was like, oh, okay, that's that's it.
(42:01):
That doesn't quite track very well.
No, you've you've gone off the rails now.
We have now crossed. We have now crossed into just
full on cereal. There's no.
Yeah, yeah. Right.
I did appreciate Kim Nam Gill being like, we're exactly the
same. You thought they deserved it
because, you know, God chose them for you.
Or like that kind of a thing. Like someone else told you they
(42:23):
were bad. I just choose them because I
want to do it. Yeah, Like, yeah.
And I'm like he had. The right idea like they are
both equal amounts of fucked up and they chose their victims the
way they chose their victims. It's just going to end up in an
FBI like handbook anyway. It's not a it's he's trying to
(42:43):
be like this holier than thou. I have a, you know, calling and
purpose on my life to to kill these people and take them off
the planet. And, you know, I feel like every
serial killer has to have some sort of God complex.
So it it was, it was interestingto see them together.
I think that's when the movie was really cooking.
(43:06):
I agree. I wish we would have seen more
of that and more of their cat and mouse game, Yes, which I
think could have been more fun, especially with Kim Nam Gill
knowing that at any moment he's just going to black out and like
not remember anything. And I thought that moment in the
house where he's like, did you just forget?
Everything Mendo. Man, yeah, I know, right?
(43:27):
Like I thought that was just a great, I thought that was just a
great moment. It's funny, I wrote in my notes.
I don't think it's this cat and mouse, I think it's alligator
and crocodile. Yeah, that's that's much better.
I don't know, 'cause but it, butthat is where it took off.
And I wish I, you know, I'm not a writer.
I think there's an alternate ending that doesn't have them,
(43:48):
you know, like with Kim Nam Gil laid flat out.
I think there's a clever, cleverer ending out there that
really kind of would play into the two of them being serial
killers and justifying their lives.
I I think there could have been something more there.
I don't know what it. Is I think I saw on the IMDb
trivia section really quick. I skimmed it and it was saying
(44:11):
that there are multiple endings like directors.
Cuts. Yeah to the movie.
Oh yeah. Yeah, I when I went searching
for someone to explain the ending to me, I'm I'm in the
Googler. One of them was just was just
awful. It was like basically the
daughter ends up killing herselfin a myriad of drug overdoses
because she couldn't handle it. And I was like, that is a
(44:33):
horrible ending and I'm glad youdid not put that in there.
And that was the only one I'd read.
But I was like, OK, we'll stop there because that's terrible.
You're like, we're not, we're not adding to the lore here.
We're subtracting from the lore.No, Yeah.
So there's like a second one on.When I look at my drama list,
there's like a second movie. Really.
(44:55):
Is there called Another Memory? And I can't, yeah, I can't tell
what it is. Maybe it's the director's cut?
That's probably it. Yeah, it looks like this is a
second one, like a second part of his memoir, like another
memory he had. So it's, yeah, it says this is
the director's cut, and it's 10 minutes longer with a different
(45:15):
ending. Yeah, 10.
Minutes to a different. I wonder if that's Yeah,
interesting. I don't know if I necessarily
want to explore that, but I mean, it's only 10 minutes.
What? I would if it was only the last
10 minutes, I would watch the last. 10 minutes, yeah, yeah,
exactly. But Speaking of like the third
act, I think that the third act with their fight is really good.
(45:39):
I liked their hand to hand and then fighting all over the house
and him walking in after literally running down Teju in
his car like he ran him over. Oh my God, the.
Car crash, like took me by surprise.
Yeah, yeah. Those were really filmic and
(46:00):
wild and beautiful, all of the car crashes.
But you had to do that because Kim Mountain Gill's a pretty big
guy. I think he could really take him
on a regular. Wait, how big is Kim Nangil?
Is he like a? 161 or something.
Yeah, I think he's told. I thought he was.
I thought he was much more we. I think sometimes he's bigger
(46:20):
and sometimes he's, you know what I mean?
Like they get. OK, so he, I mean he, they had
the. Protein shakes sometime.
Right little beefy 6 foot. Wow, no, I thought he was like
one of our little 585. 8 short king.
That's I'm telling you, I thought he was on team 5/8.
(46:40):
I didn't realize he was a six furtor.
All right. Yeah, well.
I guess I should have known thatbecause he he's worked with E
honey so many times and she's sotall and they actually are like
practically the same like there,there's no big difference there.
So I should have known. I do.
You're talking about the physicality, the the part where
(47:01):
Pyeongsu is like, I got to get strong, I got to limber up.
Because if this comes out to my hand to hand thing like strength
is, that'll be like the number one thing, the number one
deciding factor. I had lost it laughing
internally. I was like, yeah, dude, you bet
it's gonna come back in 24 hours.
You got that? Trying to crush the apple in his
(47:22):
hand. He was like the apple.
Oh. My God.
That was funny. That was.
That was. Oh, shut up, that was.
Great. Why is that a thing?
Korean guys like to like split an apple.
Like what? What is that with them?
Yeah. I've never, I've never
understood that one. I'm always like, all right, you
do you. Yeah.
You do you, buddy. Right.
(47:45):
But I will say going back to what you guys had said earlier,
like the comedy, I think the humor of it really did gave it
that extra half a bottle of sojufor me.
Because it it gave it gave it a little bit more humanity, for a
lack of a better word. Because I think if without that
it would have been, it would have been just this, this
(48:08):
cacophony of noise. Because there was no reliable
narrator, right? There was no direct.
There was no direct through linefor us to follow.
And without the like bits of comedy, I think I would have
been just like, what am I watching?
Yeah. Like what is happening right
now? It made it.
Yeah, yeah. It it, it brought humanity into
it. It made it real.
And otherwise that whole poetry class thing would have really
(48:32):
been out of left field. Right, the poetry class bro,
that thing was hilarious. Right.
It's absurd. It's absurd that he's like the
serial killer sitting in there with this.
Like, what do you call it? Like a poetry teacher who takes
himself so seriously? What?
Do you call it like God? Yeah, he's just.
Pompous. Pompous.
(48:53):
It was hilarious. Yeah.
Yeah. It was good.
Stuff I love his voice over too.He's like, I hate this class.
She made me come. So it's supposed to be good for
Alzheimer's. He's gonna, I'm gonna kill him.
Yeah, he's. Just he deserves to die.
He's nice. He's.
Just like, that's hilarious. I don't really love that.
Yeah, yeah. Now I do think, well, I was just
(49:18):
expecting him to die at the end of the at the movie, Yeah.
Yes, for sure. OK.
Someone had to, right? Yeah, yeah, he didn't die.
He, like, keeps living. But Teju does die.
The psychotic boyfriend does die.
Yeah, and The thing is, you wanthim to die in the moment, but
I'm not sure that was really that satisfying looking back on
(49:40):
it. Yeah, I agree.
I was actually just thinking that as you were saying it,
because it was like it doesn't. I mean, we do know he trained
hard our our, our Alzheimer's father trained hard to make sure
he could, could defeat him in hand to hand combat.
But in the actual real, in the real world, I thought he
overcame. I think he kind of overtook him
(50:02):
way too easily. And it would have been, I think.
I think the ending would have made a little bit more sense if
somehow Minteju escaped or got out of there, or somehow managed
to survive in some way. I mean, you could read the
ending as Teju is still around somewhere and did live, yeah.
(50:23):
Just in his mind, I mean, and also that also works, just being
in his mind. But again, I was, I just, I
think, yeah, for me, like that whole there's a third act and
there's like final beat that just didn't kind of right.
It didn't, it didn't really landfor me.
I was a little. I was a little.
Like what? What did you think of the reveal
that his last victim 17 years ago was his philandering wife
(50:47):
and the mother of Unni like his daughter, but then his daughter
was not his biological child? Yeah, I think that was supposed
to feel like a bigger twist thanit was.
Yeah, I agree. Or I guess he just needed a
reason to stop killing, but theydidn't really explore that.
So I'm just kind of putting thaton there.
(51:08):
I don't know. I it, it didn't seem that big a
thing. It was a force.
Retirement because I guess the brain injury was so severe he
didn't go to the hospital. But then.
Right. He did have some sort of surgery
that is documented so that when he went to see the doctor, the
doctor was like, oh, it seems like you had a brain surgery due
(51:31):
to an accident. Oh, right, yeah.
So like this Alzheimer's and dementia that you're
experiencing could be as a result of like this brain
injury. I think that the scene where he
got in the car accident also redherring to me as to what was
happening because he like, flew out of that car.
Yeah, hit the ground. It instantly popped up and was
(51:52):
like, I'm getting back in the car, let's go.
And I was like, well, that is weird.
Weird. And so I, there was so many like
cartoonish moments that seem to be only that, you know, could
only happen in someone's brain. It's a little scrambled that
that is. I felt like there was a lot of
red herrings in that respect forthat.
You know, to go back to the daughter, I actually think it's
(52:12):
a it's a really big deal in Korea, this idea of blood
relations. Oh, yeah.
So that was a really big point that you, you know, for him to
say you're not related to me, you don't carry my blood.
So that I think for the Korean audience, that would be a really
big deal. She could.
She could continue her life. Yeah, unmarred by the stigma of
(52:32):
having a blood relation. Her own father be a serial
killer, right? But it's her choice to stick
with him, you know, to still visit him.
Unless that was a fantasy. No, that was real.
No, I choose to believe that wasreal.
I don't know Jen's like, I don'tknow what's.
Happening I've it was all garbled at the end.
(52:53):
I was like I have no idea like this.
I feel like it should have end. You know some movies have like 4
endings you're like so when theytook him to the to the home and
tried to cut his hair and she showed up, I was like is there
another ending that is going to have?
Like what is his? Is his roommate going to be
Minteju? Like what's?
Going on, that would have been away crazier ending.
(53:15):
You know, like he all made it all up while he was in, you
know, Cheddar Island. What was I you?
Really wanted that Cheddar Island ending.
I did. I wanted.
Like. Cheddar Island.
So yeah, it was, it was a lot. It was a lot.
I was like a, I felt like there was like a, it is kind of like
it just kind of petered the enemy's kind of petered off for
me. But going back to what Marie
said about about how the scene where he tells her you do not
(53:36):
have any of my blood in you and you are not the, you're not the
daughter of a serial murderer. I thought that scene was far
more impactful and more like emotional than the reveal of the
mother and the murder and, and how it all went down 100% in my
opinion. I thought that that that was a
bigger like, oh, right, yeah, that's right.
(53:57):
I agree with that completely. And to be honest, I was like
thinking that this was the storythat I had made-up like in the
1st 20 minutes of the movie was that he that's not his
biological daughter. He raised the daughter and it
was some baby or something that he had acquired through his
(54:18):
serial killings, so. Maybe he killed them.
Oh my God, Jess, you and I must have been on the same wavelength
because I was like, did he kill someone and they found this baby
after murdering them and decidedto take care of it?
Like literally what is like yes I thought the exact same thing.
Yeah, perfect. So me and Jen are on the same
like morbid wavelength that absolutely.
(54:38):
We are on that path, Jess. We are on it.
We. Will have Leo DiCaprio pointing
out like the the milestones for us, it's our own movie.
That was not the case. We were half right.
That's not his child. Not at all.
Not even a little. Not even a little bit.
I I just think that it was all jumbled and garbled and it, I
(55:02):
think the movie is up to interpretation in a lot of
instances. And if you are the type of movie
goer who's like that intrigues you, that thrills you to put the
pieces together how you see fit,then great.
If you're like a couple of us onthis panel that are just like.
You can just say my name. Jen OK, OK, you're like Jen and
(55:26):
you need some answers. Then this movie might not land
as much with you. And both ways are fine.
You can see 3 1/2 sold your bottles.
It didn't kill Jen. It was fine.
I survived. You survived.
Did you guys have anything else you wanted to add about our
discussion of Memoir of a Murderer?
(55:48):
Because I feel like I've come tothe end of my mental notes.
I didn't take a single note for this movie, by the way, just
running on fumes. Just going just going on
instinct. Going on instinct.
No, no, I think we covered it. I mean, yeah, I think we covered
it. I think just to kind of yes.
And to what you said as the person who needs a lot of
guideposts and these types of dramas and or movies, it is if
(56:12):
you are a person who enjoys the open-ended ending kind of thing
where you can like, you can sit around and like, like have
thousands of what ifs. This is, this is a great movie
for you because there are a bajillion what ifs in this
movie. So I would just add that.
Yeah. Just if you're a Kim Nem Gill
fan that you need to watch this,this needs to be part of your of
(56:35):
your library. Yeah, he's on hinge when he
takes his head off. I mean, that is a true highlight
of the movie. It really was.
I needed more of that. I was like I literally rewound
it and then paused it at certainpoints because I was like I need
to see this concave like I am truly.
Shocked. I know the beginning of the
(56:57):
film. He's holding a kitten.
By the end of it, he's building.He's removing his head.
Yeah. And it just was so out of left
field. It was so random.
It was so random. Like, what?
Yeah. Like, why?
Yeah. Why do we have to have a reason
for him to be psychotic? Like he's psychotic because he
(57:18):
got bashed over the head with aniron.
With an iron, Yeah. The lesson of the movie is don't
abuse your children. Don't abuse nobody, right?
I will say this did you guys anddid no one else like this is
this is again me wanting like some sort of like connection.
Didn't as soon as that iron cameout when they were fighting in
(57:40):
the end, I expected the daughterto pick that iron up and take
him out with the iron and the fact that that was just left
dangling there. I was like, I felt like that was
pretty obvious. It was right.
It was right there. Right there, low head, low
hanging fruit. I will say I was a little bit
more disturbed about the obviousage gap between the daughter who
(58:01):
was still in school and this man.
Like he's a police officer man with a full time job and he's
over here messing with a little.Kitten.
He had a kitten. Yeah.
I was like, that's the thriller right there.
That's right, The Scary Movie. Yeah, right.
(58:22):
Fine. Yeah.
No, Absolutely, yeah. All right, thank you guys so
much for watching this movie andrewatching it.
Marissa, I know that those planeride movies, they'll get you
every time, but where can peoplefind you guys online in case
they don't follow you guys or subscribe to your YouTube?
You can find us on YouTube. You can actually find us
(58:45):
everywhere at the K30 spell it out the KTHREE.
We are on Instagram, we're on Twitter, I refuse to call it X,
and we are on YouTube and those are that's where you can find
us. Nice.
Thank you guys again, this was ablast to do.
Always a good time. Thank you.
Jess yes. And I hope that the rest of your
(59:06):
spooky season and the rest of your year goes wonderfully
swimmingly. And that's it.
That's been our show. I'm Jessica, and this has been
the Tiba K Rambo's podcast.
I'm Jessica and this is Tiba K Rambles where a couple of
friends review Korean dramas except it is spooky season and
we are back for another movie review.
For this episode I am joined by Jen and Marissa from the K3
YouTube and podcast. How are you guys?
Good. We're good.
(00:39):
Thanks. It's been a minute since you
guys have been on the podcast. The last time you guys were here
was for the Healer review, whichwas a ton of fun, but I thought
it would be fun to bring you guys back to do a review of the
movie Memoir of a Murderer. So how have you guys been?
What have you guys been up to? If you guys want to share with
(01:01):
the Tibock audience what you guys maybe have been watching in
the past week or so, K dramas, Kmovies, what have you.
Well, it's now mid-september andthere was a post lovely runner
lull for a lot of people. So I'm currently watching Love
Next Door and Queen Wu and I don't know, my slate feels
(01:23):
really full right now. Also No Gain, no love, and it's
a it's been a pretty enjoyable fall.
It's not the obsessions that I was hoping for, but I'm fairly
happy right now. Got you.
Got you. Yeah, I'm also watching Love
Next Door. I think I'm on episode 5.
I have like no desire to keep going, but I have just, I
(01:48):
prematurely said I was going to do a podcast episode on it.
So I am going to finish the showin a timely manner.
So that's on my docket too. But.
I don't know. I see people dropping it left
and right. Yeah, it's yeah.
Anyway, Jen, how about you? I am with you Jess.
(02:10):
Love next door is got like one more week to give me something
to to anchor on or I'm dropping it.
But I am loving no gain no love and Cinderella at 2:00 AM.
If you haven't tried that littlenugget out yet.
I'm loving that one. And then I also am loving
Blackout. If you are into crime and
(02:32):
thrillers. That one's fantastic.
It's on Hulu, It just dropped. They dropped the 1st 8 episodes
on Hulu. And it's a little bit their
release schedules a little wonkyon Hulu because they dropped
them all at the same time and then nothing since September
1st. But it does look like the whole
series is going to be there. So yeah, but it's it's
spectacular. It's so good.
I like that. I like that blackout.
(02:52):
OK, yeah, I have a handful of dramas that are on my Finish
2024 list. That's just a personal list that
I want to finish these dramas because I've been completely out
of the loop for most of the yearand the year hasn't been that
strong is what I'm hearing and what I'm feeling in the air and
the ether. So I'll add that one to the
(03:14):
list, including I'll I'll give No Gain No Love a shot as well
as Cinderella at 2 AMA shot because those two sound really
fun and cute. So yeah, I would also recommend
The Frog and if you're tuning into this podcast because you
you like a thriller and you likesome violence and you like a
good looking Korean project product, then I highly recommend
(03:37):
The Frog on Netflix. Yes, with Komenshi, I think is
in that show. Yeah, I've heard good things
about that show too. There's like a handful of shows
here and there that like pop up and I'm like, oh, I got to add
that to my finished 2024 list, which is not very long,
admittedly. So anyway, we are going to just
(03:59):
do a a review of Memoir of a Murderer.
It is a feature length film. We are not going to be covering
AK drama, as I said before. But before we do, if this is
your first time listening, thankyou.
Go ahead and subscribe on your favorite podcast.
We're on Apple Podcast, Spotify,Google Podcasts and many more.
And if you like us, please give us a review on Apple Podcasts
(04:20):
and Spotify. That goes such a long way for
us. Come and check us out on social
media to stay up to date on our latest episodes and reviews.
You can find us on X formerly Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and
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fan, please consider becoming a patron.
It's a great way for you to get involved and ensure your
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Patreon page is patreon.com debakpod.
(04:41):
Once again, the new Patreon is patreon.com debakpod.
Shout out to our patrons Janet, Curtis, Bale, CD, Alana, Grace,
Lorna, Adya, Sami, Caitlin, Julia, Michelle, Tami, Aaron,
Martha, Delphia, Maria, Kelly and Fatima.
Love you guys. You guys are so wonderful.
Thank you so much for your support.
(05:03):
All right, so I'm back to my roots here.
As I said before, back to some movies.
Let's get into it. This was a first time watch for
me. The IMDb synopsis for this movie
reads real quick. A former serial killer with
Alzheimer's fights to protect his daughter from her psychotic
boyfriend. That's it done.
(05:23):
Boom out. That was it, that was it.
That was all IMDb gave you. That's hilarious.
Literally. It So this movie was released on
September 7th, 2017, September 8th in the States.
It's an hour and 58 minutes long, basically two hours long.
It's directed by Wanchinon who'salso directed The Suspect in
(05:45):
2013 with Kong Yu. 7 Days from O7.
He was a writer for Rampant from2018.
It's a zombie movie with Hyun Bin which I really enjoyed.
I don't know if you guys have seen some other stuff from this
director but. Rampant.
For sure rampant. Yeah, saw rampant.
I actually saw a suspect. OK.
(06:05):
That was during my Gong Yu Kong Yu phase, so I saw.
I watched that and Rampant for sure.
This movie was written, it was 2writers.
The first writer is Huang Zhou Yun and when I saw the list of
movies that this person has written I was like oh shit.
So a screenwriter for Old Boy Masquerade and Rampant.
(06:30):
So this makes a lot of sense. So worked with the director.
This definitely had an old boy like feel to.
It for sure on your first sight.On your first sight, when I saw
Old Boy I about fell back like 5feet.
So yeah, I'm assuming you guys have watched Old Boy, the Pak
Tanuk 2003 film. I have not, but I read all the
(06:51):
synopsises for it, so I know I know what the big reveal.
Is God. This felt very old, Boy asked.
OK, I'm not sure. I have sat through the movie.
It's horrifying, OK? I guess I'm the only one who's
been traumatized here. So last year and it's on the
Patreon feed. Actually, I went and I did the
(07:13):
whole Vengeance trilogy from PakChon Luke and I reviewed it
solo. I just like decided to dive deep
and pop my Pak Chung Cherry, so to speak and like.
Did all three movies. You went hard.
And when I got to old boy, I waslike, have I was I don't know
(07:33):
what to what to say. I the experience of watching old
boy with traumatized me. Yeah, I there there's I'm still
reeling. There's nothing but trauma to
say about that. Literally.
Yeah, literally. That's it.
So that's it. The fact that this writer
contributed to my trauma. Right.
Says a lot. They wrote Masquerade from 2012
(07:55):
which is an excellent excellent.It's a movie with Ebengun.
Yeah, that's a good one. That's really good.
Really good, and if you've seen the show The Crown Clown, this
is the movie. That it's based on.
I love the crown clown. Yes.
It's the same. It's the same king and clown,
(08:16):
yes. Yes.
Correct. I love it.
So moving on to the other screenwriter, Kimyonga wrote.
And then I again fell back 10 feet because when I saw this
movie on here, I was like, Oh myGod.
It's the movie that started off for me.
They wrote A Moment to Remember from 2004, which I'm just sorry,
(08:41):
like, I need a minute, Chelsea. OK, I thought OK, because I was
like, Oh my God, this movie is what started my K drama journey.
Wow. I understand that.
Yes, it's a classic. Yeah.
Yeah. If you want some heartbreak,
then definitely watch the 2004 movie A Moment to Remember.
(09:03):
It makes a lot of sense because of the memory aspect of that
movie that ties in with this movie.
Memoir of a murderer. Yeah.
So this movie stars Sol Kyungu who plays Byongsu, the main
character. His daughter is only played by
(09:24):
Sol Hyon who I can't remember what K pop group she's part of.
Not AOA. It is AOA.
It is AOA. AOA and then Kim Nangil plays
Teju the psychotic boyfriend from the IMDb synopsis.
And then we have a few and then we have a few other bit players
(09:47):
like Odell SU plays Byung Man, the cop best friend E Byung Jun
plays the poetry instructor, which it's hard to like
visualize these people. But once you see like a picture
of them, you're like, Oh my God,I've seen these people in like a
million things. It's the Ajishi crew.
It's literally the Ajishi crew. And then Kimmei Yun plays young
(10:08):
Maria character Kimi Yun from Snowdrop this year.
Lovely runner. Runner which blew her up.
Everybody's knows her now. So that is our cast.
Oh God. That was her.
Yeah, that was her. It was like blinking.
You'll miss it. Oh God, I didn't recognize her
at all. Yeah, yeah.
(10:28):
And I've seen her in like 4 dramas.
I know as an adult I didn't evenrecognize her though.
You guys haven't mentioned Kilhey Young like she is like
she is like the how many to end all how many's like she does
everything from nuns to like theworst mom on the planet.
It's something in the rain. Literally I so the mom from
something in the rain is in thisand she plays Maria, the sister.
(10:53):
And like, I guess that's all we'll say about that.
We're in the non spoiler sectionright now.
But like, yeah, she's in this. When I saw her, I was like a
nice nun character. Whoa, that's not heard of that
before. Well, you clearly did not watch
Midnight in the Midnight in the Hag one.
No, at midnight romance in the Hag one.
(11:14):
She was delightful. Bless her, OK?
She was she was delightful and she then she had scenes with we
had June when he was her son andsomething in the rain and all of
us were like, this is so surrealbecause she's not yelling at
him. It was great.
Right, exactly, exactly. There's history here.
All right, so we are at the end of this general section.
(11:36):
What did you guys think of this movie Memoir of a Murderer?
I think 1 of you had already seen it before, the other had
not. Yeah, so I remember watching
this, I think I think it was 2018, like as soon as it came
out on his streaming site. And I have memories of watching
it on a plane. Like I must have downloaded it
somehow. Watching it on a plane going, Is
(11:57):
this OK? Because I just kept going and
then it got so violent. I'm like, are there children
around me? But I, I really enjoyed it.
I watched it for Kim Nam Gill and stayed for his his kind of
duel with Silkyungyu. And it just I mean, that IMDb
(12:22):
synopsis just just barely scratches the surface.
Yeah, I know it was like AI generated like could be 50 other
films released that year. But it I mean, it begs the
question, who knows a serial killer better than another
serial killer? And I just thought that was such
a fascinating twist on the genre.
Yeah, yeah. It was enjoyable and visually of
(12:45):
just stunning. I thought that the way the
director used visuals and editing techniques and the
music, I thought it was amazing.The story itself fell flat, kind
of flat for me because I was expecting more of a twist, for
lack of a better word, there at the end.
And the twist was almost that there was no twist.
(13:06):
So, yeah, that was that was my my overall thought that I was, I
was a little bit disappointed because I all the visual cues
that they gave US-led me down a different path.
So yeah, I I agree with you. I think, Well, I agree that I
thought that there was going to be a twist because this was my
first time watching this movie and again, I'm scarred with Pak
(13:28):
Januk dramas. I've scarred with the, you know,
punching holes. And so I came into this thinking
there's gonna be a twist. It's gonna there's gonna be a
gotcha in the. Movie yeah, I was expecting
we're not going spoilers so I'llI'll hold that it's a spoiler
spoiler section. Yeah, yeah, well, I'll cue us
when we're in the spoiler. Section, but sorry, no, no, it's
(13:49):
fine. Yeah, I was excited to watch
this movie because also I came in blind.
Like I didn't even read the IMDbsynopsis.
I like literally just press playand was like, OK, surprise me,
Memoir of a murderer. I was like, OK, they're not
going to surprise us by who's the murderer because it's going
to be whoever is telling us their life story, their memoir.
(14:12):
But I was like, how what? What else?
Like what else is the story going to be about?
I was surprised that it had. It felt a lot like Memento in
that like this person is fighting their mind, their
fractured mind, and how there islarge quantities of time missing
(14:35):
and they are trying to piece together what they've forgotten.
And I really liked that aspect of it, that the editing and the
way that certain things are shotmakes you confused.
And that's what I imagine experiencing dementia or
Alzheimer's is like. Unfortunately, I have direct
(14:57):
experience with dementia and Alzheimer's in my life with
family members who have gone through the disease and
progressed through it, and you just have to laugh to keep from
crying. There's a lot of liberties that
they took, I would say with it, but I personally don't feel like
it was Alzheimer's or dementia. It was just brain damage.
(15:20):
Right. It was just brain damage that
progressed throughout the 17 years and, you know, it
manifests tested in this really unique way with like his little
ticks and his episodes and things like that.
It wasn't necessarily, you know,the slow ravaging of time that
is typical of the brain shrinkage.
(15:42):
Sure. Of dementia, things like that.
Right. I mean, the fact that they're
letting him drive. Right, like they had.
The big I was like. Drive live at home.
Yeah. You know, like they have like
maybe that's a maybe no. No, he was out here performing
his daily functions as if he wasn't severely impaired.
(16:03):
He had his business running still with the veterinary
business, injecting little cats and animals.
I was like, he they're letting him do all this, that he should
be done, like this business should be sold by now, like the
way that he's at. Yeah.
So they took a lot of liberties.And I don't know if it was a
(16:27):
it's a cultural thing as well with Korea, I don't know, like
is it just a movie or is it a little bit of both?
So I think that's. Part of it that your lead, your
protagonist is an unreliable narrator exactly and an anti
hero. So it's just, I don't, I, I
(16:50):
would like to think that most people with Alzheimer's in Korea
are taken care of in some way that doesn't involve their
teenage daughter taking care of them at home in the countryside
with still going out on dates. With a recorder as his only
device for remembering. Like those are like the recorder
(17:10):
was the tattoos and memento likeit's yeah.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, it's got its little things.
Actually jumping on yes anding your memento.
I kept thinking it was, I kept thinking were going to get like
a Shutter Island situation. And I was like waiting for the
big Shutter Island reveal. And then maybe that's why I was
like, oh, all right, yeah, that did not happen.
(17:33):
Because. Of all the, all the cutting, all
the editing and the way we wouldgo from one location to another
location just very quickly. And like there was that one
scene where he was talking to his cop buddy and then all of a
sudden his cop buddy just got upand his cop car just rolled up
and he just got into it and he left like as if he just called
an Uber that arrived. It was like stuff like that made
me think that there was, it was all going on in his mind.
(17:56):
That's all. So that made me give me very
much a Shutter Island idea, kindof like what you said, Memento.
It just made me think that again, as also, as Marissa said,
just not a reliable narrator. Like what are we actually
witnessing here? Because everything seems to be
there's no real flow to it. It's just kind of jumping all
over the place. And so that's, that was what, as
(18:16):
I was watching it, I kept waiting for that big reveal.
Yeah, I'm not sure if we ever get it and it starts.
Right. This isn't much of A spoiler,
but the movie starts where how it ends, and then we find out
like all the in between bits, like what happens to get us to
that part that we saw at the very beginning of the movie.
And yeah, I thought that, you know, with his shoes being on,
(18:40):
you know, the wrong foot and stuff.
I was like, oh, yeah, this is going to be like a shit show.
Like some twist is going to happen.
And then at one point in the movie, we even in the movie, we
see his shoes are placed in the wrong backwards.
So I'm like, oh, that's another clue.
And I'm like, no, it's not. Wait.
Yeah, I but I thought, you know,overall it was a very I mean,
(19:03):
there was maybe the movie is slightly too long for what it
is. Maybe the movie isn't doing
anything crazy with the cinematography.
Like this isn't like Roger Deakins here, but that's fine.
But I really appreciated how it is setting a tone.
It does have like the bamboo forest, which is really nice to
(19:25):
look at. It's very picturesque.
I feel like there's something too it's.
Creepy as hell. And it's creepy as shit.
Creepy as hell like did was it just me or did he have it like
all gritted off as if he was like I have dead bodies here
like like he's being super what is?
It just with. It right?
I know, it was so creepy. And these small towns are always
(19:47):
empty. Right.
Like he's dragged that many bodies.
I mean, he's a serial killer. There's a there's.
He's left a lot in his wake and no ones figured it out.
Right. Like they're not like there's
not like there's 30 missing people that we can't account
for. It's like.
I know I'd like the friend. Well, anyway, we'll get into
(20:09):
like a little bit more in the spoilers section, but how did
you guys feel about the acting performances from everybody?
I know that one of you wanted towatch it because of Kim Nam Gil
specifically. So how'd you guys feel about
them? Yes, Kim Nam Gil, he's such a
chameleon. He, I mean, if you look at him
in Fiery Priest where he's just this kind of wackadoo, you know,
(20:32):
martial arts wielding priest with this weird sense of humor
and then you know, some of his melodramas and then you've got
this, which is what did IMDb call him Psychotic boyfriend?
Psychotic boyfriend. Yeah, yeah, he was.
Definitely. He was definitely the definition
of that because you would. But that's the where the
(20:53):
unreliable narrator comes in because.
And I don't think the film went far enough with this.
But like, should I believe him? Because he's so charming and
he's so handsome and he's so nice to this young woman.
So I really enjoyed his performance.
So Kyung Gu was, you know, I think the last thing I saw him
in recently was Kill Buck Soon. Yeah.
On Netflix. I'm like, is this the same
(21:14):
actor? He's such a like, lost Ajushi
grandpa with, you know, brain damage from I don't know how
many car accidents. But he.
I thought was very compelling and but I do have to say Saul
Young I thought was a weak link who played his daughter was a
weak link in this film. OK.
All right. Yeah.
(21:35):
Jen, do you, do you agree with the assessment on?
I absolutely agree with her assessment.
I came to it. I would never have watched this
if you had not asked us to, or if I was on a huge Kim Nam
Gilkek. And it was lovely to see him
play kind of outside of his usual repertoire of characters
he usually plays. But I feel like there was
(21:57):
definitely a theme there that he's kind of got that little.
He's got a little bit of a sassystreak that I think in all his
characters came through. I on one hand believed 100% that
he was a serial killer. And yet in the same in the same
vein, also was like, there's no way because again, unreliable
narrator, but I thought he did anice job of threading that
needle throughout most of the most of the the movie.
(22:17):
And this is my first time seeingso Kungu.
So he was new to me. I have nothing really to base it
on. But I really believe, like you
had said earlier, Jess, that if he did portray, I thought the
ravages of brain damage very well.
Like I was as confused as he was.
And I thought he portrayed how confusing and disorienting that
was. I thought you did a really great
(22:38):
job with that. And then, yeah, that.
I mean, I thought the daughter was, you know, she was, she
seemed like in a different show,to be perfectly honest, until
the last act. I felt like she was kind of in a
like some some like ROM kami slice of life, picturesque, our
bluesy kind of of drama. And so, you know, I mean, she
(23:00):
never really I mean, again, unreliable narrator, but we
never heard her talk about her mom who just suddenly
disappeared. We never heard we never really
got we didn't really learn much about her.
So I don't know if that's part of it where we just didn't get,
we just didn't have enough with her except his, our main
protagonist's view of her, right?
So that's all we got. So maybe that maybe she did what
(23:22):
she was supposed to do, but I didn't feel like it was horribly
dynamic. Oh, I see it.
Didn't Take Me Out, but it I didn't think it was horrible.
I see. I can, I can agree with that,
that she was very two-dimensional, but that's how
he's, I guess viewed her is justthat's just his daughter and she
comes and goes and she feeds me and then that's it.
Like, there's not much there to it.
(23:45):
And yeah, it's only until the third act that I'm like, OK,
like we could, we're getting a little, you know, stakes here in
something. Yeah.
From her. Also the the woman in the poetry
class, I've seen her in a bunch of traumas.
She's she's played a. Shaman, she's played, she's
played, you know, she's always alittle overdressed.
(24:08):
The heels are always a little high, the lipsticks always a
little red, redder than everyoneelse, and.
As soon as she's so. Funny and actually that was
that's what I was surprised thatthere was humor in this film.
And so you need someone like KimNam Gill to to carry that off or
someone is probably very experienced.
So Kyungu. So to have this character I
(24:30):
should just look up her name because.
It's Huang Sook Jung. Yeah, so you kind of the moment
you see her, you know what's gonna happen to her character.
Oh my God, the second she went chasing after the first time,
like I'm sorry pumpkin, it was good knowing.
Marked for Danielle. On you.
Yeah, there's 2 serial killers in this film.
You're not getting out alive. You are not making it to the
(24:52):
third act, my friend. You were gonna trigger the third
act. Thank you very much.
Nice to meet you. Oh my God.
I guess that leads into because you guys are talking about
comedic bits of the movie and comedic characters like this
one. Did the movie scare you at all?
Did it thrill you at all? Hell yeah.
I thought it. I did, yeah.
(25:13):
Maybe that's because I was firsttime I watched it.
I was on a plane like. Yeah.
Feeling like being 35? 1000 that'll get shit real, real
good. I have to say it did not, I
mean, again, maybe it's just because, you know, I, it was not
one of my first Korean thrillersthat I've watched.
(25:34):
And I feel like I also did this,unfortunately, with Train to
Pusan where everyone was like, Oh my God, the zombies are
terrifying. And I'm like, I can't watch
that. And then I watched Kingdom and
then I watched something else with zombies.
And then I'm like, all right, I need to watch Train to Pusan and
then I'm. Like, oh, you like backed?
Into it. These aren't that scary.
What do you mean? It's because I've, you know, so
I kind of ruined it for myself because that the speed and the,
(25:58):
you know, the dynamic of those zombies at that time is the
first time we've kind of seen that.
But I had already experienced itthrough the dramas.
And I feel like that's kind of what happened to me here, that I
kind of was like, I was always waiting for something to happen.
And then it, you know, I, I, so I feel like, yeah.
And I'm also watching Blackout right now.
And so Blackout is much more like, oh, my God.
(26:20):
Oh my God, that happened. Oh my God.
Because it's kind. It's actually weirdly kind of
similar because he is accused ofmurdering two of his classmates
when he's 19 years old. And it's the reason he and he
can't remember because they claim he drank so much he
blacked out, hence the title. And so he ends up in jail for 10
years, gets out, goes back to his hometown, they all hate him,
(26:42):
obviously, and things start happening and he's trying
desperately to get his memory back, to learn what happened
back then. And so it is, and it might.
And again, it might be just likeI said, it might be a this movie
might have been a casualty of mewatching Blackout at the same
time. I wonder because I watched this
in 2018. I think I started watching K
(27:04):
dramas in 2016, so still fairly new and I don't think I'd seen
that many thrillers at that. And this is also like pre
Parasite, which is the twist of all twists in Korean films.
So it's yeah. So I can see like if it's on, if
you watch it later, it doesn't have the.
Yeah. Oomph that you're waiting.
(27:24):
For right, especially I mean like for real parasite, you're
like what? That was, yeah.
I didn't feel like this movie had that what moment at all?
I was just kind of like, oh. Yeah, it was like, it was
definitely like a oh. Really.
Seriously, that's me. When it finally ended, I went.
(27:48):
I wish you guys could see our faces right now because we are
just making these crazy faces, as we say, 20 different ways.
But yeah, I agree with you guys that I was fully expecting to be
thrilled and scared. And I think I only was scared
one time. And it was a jump scare that we
(28:08):
could talk about in the spoiler section.
And then the rest of the movie, I was like, you know how you go
through a haunted house and you're like peeking around the
corner? You're like, I see the dark
corner, I'm expecting it. And then you look with the
flashlight and nothing's there. That was like a movie.
Wait. I'm fine.
I'm good. All right.
(28:29):
Oh, Nope, not there either. Oh.
Nope, you're like it's just the dark corner, like, you know,
yeah, it you it was fine. There's nothing inherently bad
about the movie and I do feel like it's maybe I watched it at
the wrong time in my K movie journey, where I've watched
(28:53):
already a lot of things and I'vealready watched all the Pak
Chung nooks and I've watched thepong junior right the train to
Busan I. Mean, coming off of a Pak Chung
Wuk marathon, this one was not gonna was not gonna meet.
It's not gonna touch. At all.
Not even at all. Not even at all.
Yeah. It was gonna be.
(29:13):
It was gonna be lacking. Yeah.
I, but I think, you know, the whole reason for doing this,
this this spooky season and for doing movies are obviously this
this year is because I didn't have enough time to watch an
entire spooky drama. So I thought, you know, let's
cover movies. I love movies anyways.
And a lot of Korean watchers don't like spooky stuff.
(29:35):
They don't like scary movies. They don't like horror genre as
a genre. And so I always like to
highlight these things and I'm like, you know, let's, you know,
get out of our comfort zone. Every so often it is spooky
season. This is the perfect time to like
try something new. And it's only two hours and
we're all three of us are sayingyou can do it.
(29:56):
You can watch memoir of a murderer and you'll be fine.
I mean, let's. Let's be honest, it's the length
of this whole movie is like a length of like a love love next
door episode, for God's sake. So oh.
So get me started on the length of episodes in Cage.
I don't know. Anyway, I think it's worth
trying and I think we're going to close out the non spoiler
(30:19):
section which is giving our scores out of fives hold you
bottles. So whoever wants to go first
score out of five, soldier by 5 being the best, 0 being not so
great. You can give half half bottles
as well half scores. I'd give it a 3 1/2.
Oh my God, So was that. Yeah.
Exactly. What I was going to give it, All
right, all right. Yeah.
(30:41):
All right. I think I will go ahead and give
it, I don't know, just to be contrary and fresh, I'll give it
4. But I am known to be that person
that changes my score in letterbox like months later.
I'd be like, why did I give thata four?
Why did I give that a four and ahalf?
And I'll change it to be lower. I almost never change something
(31:03):
to be higher. It's like the recency bias and
the high of watching something will wear off and then I'll be
like, whoa, what was I thinking there?
And then I'll drop a score. So I'm going to go ahead and
give my initial 4 Sochu bottles for this and it will likely drop
to 3 1/2 later. OK.
(31:23):
But I'll give it four. It's solid, It's not perfect,
it's very watchable, it's very atmospheric.
And if you've never watched Memento or these other movies
that we're referencing, then it's probably going to get you
right. Like some of these like tricks
and editing things are going to get you.
So I, I think it's, it's worth it for for a certain audience
(31:46):
members. So with that being said, we are
going to get into the spoiler section and talk a little bit
more in detail about this movie right after this The Greatest
Trick. Houston, we have a problem.
I am the father. I see dead people.
The devil ever pulled. Pay no attention to that man
behind the curtain. Was convincing the world you
(32:07):
can't handle the. It didn't exist, no.
What's in the box? All right, we're on the other
side of spoilers. I know we kind of did a few
spoilers in the other in the nonspoiler section, but we are
going to do a little bit of a deep dive here on the memoir of
a murderer film. Jen, I hear you have a question
for us. I do and I'm this is the this is
(32:29):
the big Kahuna spoiler of the whole movie.
But can someone explain the ending to me?
OK, I had, I was. So I literally had to go to the
Googler to be like, someone explained the ending to me
because I don't know what just happened at all.
Like is is I had spent the wholemovie being like, is he actually
(32:50):
Kim Nam Gill and this is just him reliving all of his murders?
OK, No, because they actually fought and people died.
So that's not it. Is Kim Nam Gill actually his
son? And then the Locket thing
happened and then it was like, is he just trapped in his own
memory? Like I yeah, it's the last one.
He's. Trapped in his own.
In. His own memory, yeah.
He, he really ingrained in him the knee.
(33:12):
It's almost like Inception, where it's like you're waiting
for a train and then that character can't get out of her
head. It's waiting for.
The world to fall over. Yeah, we're just waiting, right?
So Marianne Cotillard's character and Inception, like
can't get out of her head that her world isn't real even after
she comes to out of the dream. So the same thing is kind of
(33:33):
happening to him, that even after the danger is well past
and he's now in an assisted living facility or some
institutionalized or something, after this whole thing blows
over, he's still left with I need to save her from whatever
that character's name was, like Teju.
Oh yeah, Kim Mintego. Kim Teju, I need to save her
(33:57):
from Kim Teju. I have to kill Kim Teju.
Hi. That's how I interpreted it.
I mean, no, thank you. Okay, that's how I interpreted
it, but I was hoping for something a little juicier than
that because I was like, I don'tknow where this.
Okay, now The thing is, I don't know how the hell he got out of
the facility. Well, that's I don't think he
did. I think he was in we're gonna go
with that. I think he was in his own mind
(34:20):
and the tunnel. I kind of felt like the tunnel
was like his brain of some. Sort, yeah.
That's kind of how I interpretedoriginally.
And then we got the whole movie and then I was really like
boggled by the end of. Those because there was, I don't
know how he got, because he alsosomehow got his hands on
medication that he was going to inject himself with a like a
(34:40):
lethal injection. And I was like.
That's Was that real? How is that?
Even happening in a secure facility.
I don't think so I think that's his mind and he, you know it,
it's what's keeping him alive. This need to go after him 'cause
that tunnel, every time you see it in the film represents some
(35:01):
sort of fantasy or alternate reality or some, you know, time
travel portal the tunnel the. Tunnel.
It's the tunnel. It's the tunnel I would have
enjoyed a lot. It was time travel.
OK. Yeah, yeah.
I'm glad that we talked that over because I thought that was
a real tunnel and he was out like off the res and I couldn't
(35:25):
wrap my head around that part, like the logistics of him
actually making it out. I don't think so.
Well, I don't think so either and I but I also thought that
bookending the movie with that also a on one hand makes a ton
of sense and yet on another handmakes me more not confused but
really just solidifies the unreliable narrator of what did
(35:48):
we just watch. For two hours, yeah.
Yeah, I think it just got a little existential at the end,
you know? You know, I like concrete
things, Marissa. I know you do.
I'm a Virgo. I need it to be concrete like
the earth. This.
Yeah, this was like, not that this was like that at all.
(36:11):
It. Wasn't no Jenny is an
explanation. What happening?
But see, I think that for me, I enjoy like having the detective
that kind of walks you through it and explains it and kind of
gives you those guideposts whereyou're just like, like
Inception, like Inception had kind of someone that took us
through all the different things.
I don't remember who that was. I don't remember all the
(36:32):
details, but I found it to be satisfying because it was like,
hey, did you notice this? This.
This is important, you know? Yeah, I mean.
There's always these like exposition, exposition dumps in
the movie. And like Leo does one that's one
of my favourites in Inception where he just like he says like,
how did we get here? Do you remember coming here?
(36:56):
And the whole world starts to shake and he's like, this is
your first experience and shareddreaming right now.
And it's like, that is a crazy moment.
And you know, he explains stuff.Oh my God, right after.
That that's funny. We're talking Inception and
Shutter Island, which is also a Leo Leo movie.
Leo, Leo clearly is my guidepostguy for wacky movies.
(37:18):
Like, I just needed him to make a cameo and be like, Jen, this
is what you should be paying attention to.
It's like, thank you, Leo. Thank you.
Oh. My God.
So I appreciated the fact that he he made-up the sister like
the sister was a hallucination. Yeah.
I thought that was so cruel. I was like, oh shit, like that
(37:39):
was a twist. I felt that was that landed
pretty well. It did.
It did. I was expecting, I don't know.
I think it landed and then I went, oh, well, we can't do that
twice. So that's the twist of him not
being the OK, all right. Yeah, that was a good twist.
And the the whole replaying the whole scene of him putting his
(38:00):
daughter in the taxi and then playing the reality, what really
happened was like the reality was so much worse.
I'm like, he's literally puttingher in the car with her
psychotic boyfriend. Serial killer.
Yes, right. And he thinks he's putting her
in a taxi. It's it's just so.
Oh my. God, I will say that was
probably the best, the best moment in the whole movie for
(38:21):
me, because that was that was the kind of shit I love when I
watch. He's like, Oh my.
No. Yeah, like that.
So I wanted more of that. His unraveling there is so like,
you're like, Oh my God, he's like fucked it up, didn't he?
Because like he it wasn't even that he forgot that she's dating
(38:41):
a serial killer. It's that she he actively like,
put her in harm's way and shovedher off to the guy that he's
trying to keep her away from. Yeah, you know that little
recorder probably should have started every day with your
sister is not around anymore. That recorder could have been
(39:02):
much more handy. Just really good, completely
brutal, more handy. I just got off watching.
It's OK. That's love.
I don't know if you guys have seen that K drama, but there's a
similar twist in that in that show.
And so when the sister wasn't there, I was like, oh, not
again, not again, not twice in one week, twice in one week.
(39:25):
I was like. Yeah, there are some tropes that
just don't come around that often, and that's the.
Right, like the mental illness it's struggling with some sort
of psychosis does not happen that often.
It's it's kind of rare nowadays.So yeah, man, I got bamboozled
(39:46):
twice in one week. That's rough.
That's rough. It's rough.
It's rough out year, bro. I also, I thought that the the
show, I thought that the movie kind of hit its stride when it
started to delve into the theme of nature versus nurture for
serial killers. Did you guys feel any type of
(40:06):
way about that? I did, but I also thought it was
completely out of left field that Kim Nam Gill had an entire
divot bro his skull. You should have seen me at work
today when he started fixing hishair.
So the whole thing is he actually starts fixing his hair
in the mirror, in the mirror almost like obsessively.
(40:30):
And I'm like OK, weird. Then he takes his whole half
skull off. His whole head off.
Like and I was like, the fuck isgoing?
On like this. Did not.
This was not in my bingo card atall.
No, like it was like, again, going back to maybe it's all
just brain damage. Brain damage.
Clearly, yes, clearly when you are missing 1/4 of your cranium,
(40:55):
maybe a little bit of maybe a touch of brain damage.
But just a touch, just a little touch sprinkling.
Just a NAB. Her visa.
Shaking her head. She's just like, I can't.
The amount of abuse in this in this film, Oh my God.
I know. It's like, I mean you.
(41:16):
Can't the way that it. Starts like with our lead silk
young Gu like, you know, he starts killing people who air
quotes deserve it. I'm like I'm like, OK, sure.
So we can feel good about him. We'll keep following him because
he's really, you know, he's getting rid of people.
Dexter. Total noble Dexter type.
(41:38):
Yeah. And then it's just it was a lot.
He killed a lot of people, Like a lot of people.
It started going like from childabusers and like people that
beat their dog to death. So like animal abusers down to
like this person looked at me wrong and they annoyed me and I
was like, oh, okay, that's that's it.
(42:01):
That doesn't quite track very well.
No, you've you've gone off the rails now.
We have now crossed. We have now crossed into just
full on cereal. There's no.
Yeah, yeah. Right.
I did appreciate Kim Nam Gill being like, we're exactly the
same. You thought they deserved it
because, you know, God chose them for you.
Or like that kind of a thing. Like someone else told you they
(42:23):
were bad. I just choose them because I
want to do it. Yeah, Like, yeah.
And I'm like he had. The right idea like they are
both equal amounts of fucked up and they chose their victims the
way they chose their victims. It's just going to end up in an
FBI like handbook anyway. It's not a it's he's trying to
(42:43):
be like this holier than thou. I have a, you know, calling and
purpose on my life to to kill these people and take them off
the planet. And, you know, I feel like every
serial killer has to have some sort of God complex.
So it it was, it was interestingto see them together.
I think that's when the movie was really cooking.
(43:06):
I agree. I wish we would have seen more
of that and more of their cat and mouse game, Yes, which I
think could have been more fun, especially with Kim Nam Gill
knowing that at any moment he's just going to black out and like
not remember anything. And I thought that moment in the
house where he's like, did you just forget?
Everything Mendo. Man, yeah, I know, right?
(43:27):
Like I thought that was just a great, I thought that was just a
great moment. It's funny, I wrote in my notes.
I don't think it's this cat and mouse, I think it's alligator
and crocodile. Yeah, that's that's much better.
I don't know, 'cause but it, butthat is where it took off.
And I wish I, you know, I'm not a writer.
I think there's an alternate ending that doesn't have them,
(43:48):
you know, like with Kim Nam Gil laid flat out.
I think there's a clever, cleverer ending out there that
really kind of would play into the two of them being serial
killers and justifying their lives.
I I think there could have been something more there.
I don't know what it. Is I think I saw on the IMDb
trivia section really quick. I skimmed it and it was saying
(44:11):
that there are multiple endings like directors.
Cuts. Yeah to the movie.
Oh yeah. Yeah, I when I went searching
for someone to explain the ending to me, I'm I'm in the
Googler. One of them was just was just
awful. It was like basically the
daughter ends up killing herselfin a myriad of drug overdoses
because she couldn't handle it. And I was like, that is a
(44:33):
horrible ending and I'm glad youdid not put that in there.
And that was the only one I'd read.
But I was like, OK, we'll stop there because that's terrible.
You're like, we're not, we're not adding to the lore here.
We're subtracting from the lore.No, Yeah.
So there's like a second one on.When I look at my drama list,
there's like a second movie. Really.
(44:55):
Is there called Another Memory? And I can't, yeah, I can't tell
what it is. Maybe it's the director's cut?
That's probably it. Yeah, it looks like this is a
second one, like a second part of his memoir, like another
memory he had. So it's, yeah, it says this is
the director's cut, and it's 10 minutes longer with a different
(45:15):
ending. Yeah, 10.
Minutes to a different. I wonder if that's Yeah,
interesting. I don't know if I necessarily
want to explore that, but I mean, it's only 10 minutes.
What? I would if it was only the last
10 minutes, I would watch the last. 10 minutes, yeah, yeah,
exactly. But Speaking of like the third
act, I think that the third act with their fight is really good.
(45:39):
I liked their hand to hand and then fighting all over the house
and him walking in after literally running down Teju in
his car like he ran him over. Oh my God, the.
Car crash, like took me by surprise.
Yeah, yeah. Those were really filmic and
(46:00):
wild and beautiful, all of the car crashes.
But you had to do that because Kim Mountain Gill's a pretty big
guy. I think he could really take him
on a regular. Wait, how big is Kim Nangil?
Is he like a? 161 or something.
Yeah, I think he's told. I thought he was.
I thought he was much more we. I think sometimes he's bigger
(46:20):
and sometimes he's, you know what I mean?
Like they get. OK, so he, I mean he, they had
the. Protein shakes sometime.
Right little beefy 6 foot. Wow, no, I thought he was like
one of our little 585. 8 short king.
That's I'm telling you, I thought he was on team 5/8.
(46:40):
I didn't realize he was a six furtor.
All right. Yeah, well.
I guess I should have known thatbecause he he's worked with E
honey so many times and she's sotall and they actually are like
practically the same like there,there's no big difference there.
So I should have known. I do.
You're talking about the physicality, the the part where
(47:01):
Pyeongsu is like, I got to get strong, I got to limber up.
Because if this comes out to my hand to hand thing like strength
is, that'll be like the number one thing, the number one
deciding factor. I had lost it laughing
internally. I was like, yeah, dude, you bet
it's gonna come back in 24 hours.
You got that? Trying to crush the apple in his
(47:22):
hand. He was like the apple.
Oh. My God.
That was funny. That was.
That was. Oh, shut up, that was.
Great. Why is that a thing?
Korean guys like to like split an apple.
Like what? What is that with them?
Yeah. I've never, I've never
understood that one. I'm always like, all right, you
do you. Yeah.
You do you, buddy. Right.
(47:45):
But I will say going back to what you guys had said earlier,
like the comedy, I think the humor of it really did gave it
that extra half a bottle of sojufor me.
Because it it gave it gave it a little bit more humanity, for a
lack of a better word. Because I think if without that
it would have been, it would have been just this, this
(48:08):
cacophony of noise. Because there was no reliable
narrator, right? There was no direct.
There was no direct through linefor us to follow.
And without the like bits of comedy, I think I would have
been just like, what am I watching?
Yeah. Like what is happening right
now? It made it.
Yeah, yeah. It it, it brought humanity into
it. It made it real.
And otherwise that whole poetry class thing would have really
(48:32):
been out of left field. Right, the poetry class bro,
that thing was hilarious. Right.
It's absurd. It's absurd that he's like the
serial killer sitting in there with this.
Like, what do you call it? Like a poetry teacher who takes
himself so seriously? What?
Do you call it like God? Yeah, he's just.
Pompous. Pompous.
(48:53):
It was hilarious. Yeah.
Yeah. It was good.
Stuff I love his voice over too.He's like, I hate this class.
She made me come. So it's supposed to be good for
Alzheimer's. He's gonna, I'm gonna kill him.
Yeah, he's. Just he deserves to die.
He's nice. He's.
Just like, that's hilarious. I don't really love that.
Yeah, yeah. Now I do think, well, I was just
(49:18):
expecting him to die at the end of the at the movie, Yeah.
Yes, for sure. OK.
Someone had to, right? Yeah, yeah, he didn't die.
He, like, keeps living. But Teju does die.
The psychotic boyfriend does die.
Yeah, and The thing is, you wanthim to die in the moment, but
I'm not sure that was really that satisfying looking back on
(49:40):
it. Yeah, I agree.
I was actually just thinking that as you were saying it,
because it was like it doesn't. I mean, we do know he trained
hard our our, our Alzheimer's father trained hard to make sure
he could, could defeat him in hand to hand combat.
But in the actual real, in the real world, I thought he
overcame. I think he kind of overtook him
(50:02):
way too easily. And it would have been, I think.
I think the ending would have made a little bit more sense if
somehow Minteju escaped or got out of there, or somehow managed
to survive in some way. I mean, you could read the
ending as Teju is still around somewhere and did live, yeah.
(50:23):
Just in his mind, I mean, and also that also works, just being
in his mind. But again, I was, I just, I
think, yeah, for me, like that whole there's a third act and
there's like final beat that just didn't kind of right.
It didn't, it didn't really landfor me.
I was a little. I was a little.
Like what? What did you think of the reveal
that his last victim 17 years ago was his philandering wife
(50:47):
and the mother of Unni like his daughter, but then his daughter
was not his biological child? Yeah, I think that was supposed
to feel like a bigger twist thanit was.
Yeah, I agree. Or I guess he just needed a
reason to stop killing, but theydidn't really explore that.
So I'm just kind of putting thaton there.
(51:08):
I don't know. I it, it didn't seem that big a
thing. It was a force.
Retirement because I guess the brain injury was so severe he
didn't go to the hospital. But then.
Right. He did have some sort of surgery
that is documented so that when he went to see the doctor, the
doctor was like, oh, it seems like you had a brain surgery due
(51:31):
to an accident. Oh, right, yeah.
So like this Alzheimer's and dementia that you're
experiencing could be as a result of like this brain
injury. I think that the scene where he
got in the car accident also redherring to me as to what was
happening because he like, flew out of that car.
Yeah, hit the ground. It instantly popped up and was
(51:52):
like, I'm getting back in the car, let's go.
And I was like, well, that is weird.
Weird. And so I, there was so many like
cartoonish moments that seem to be only that, you know, could
only happen in someone's brain. It's a little scrambled that
that is. I felt like there was a lot of
red herrings in that respect forthat.
You know, to go back to the daughter, I actually think it's
(52:12):
a it's a really big deal in Korea, this idea of blood
relations. Oh, yeah.
So that was a really big point that you, you know, for him to
say you're not related to me, you don't carry my blood.
So that I think for the Korean audience, that would be a really
big deal. She could.
She could continue her life. Yeah, unmarred by the stigma of
(52:32):
having a blood relation. Her own father be a serial
killer, right? But it's her choice to stick
with him, you know, to still visit him.
Unless that was a fantasy. No, that was real.
No, I choose to believe that wasreal.
I don't know Jen's like, I don'tknow what's.
Happening I've it was all garbled at the end.
(52:53):
I was like I have no idea like this.
I feel like it should have end. You know some movies have like 4
endings you're like so when theytook him to the to the home and
tried to cut his hair and she showed up, I was like is there
another ending that is going to have?
Like what is his? Is his roommate going to be
Minteju? Like what's?
Going on, that would have been away crazier ending.
(53:15):
You know, like he all made it all up while he was in, you
know, Cheddar Island. What was I you?
Really wanted that Cheddar Island ending.
I did. I wanted.
Like. Cheddar Island.
So yeah, it was, it was a lot. It was a lot.
I was like a, I felt like there was like a, it is kind of like
it just kind of petered the enemy's kind of petered off for
me. But going back to what Marie
said about about how the scene where he tells her you do not
(53:36):
have any of my blood in you and you are not the, you're not the
daughter of a serial murderer. I thought that scene was far
more impactful and more like emotional than the reveal of the
mother and the murder and, and how it all went down 100% in my
opinion. I thought that that that was a
bigger like, oh, right, yeah, that's right.
(53:57):
I agree with that completely. And to be honest, I was like
thinking that this was the storythat I had made-up like in the
1st 20 minutes of the movie was that he that's not his
biological daughter. He raised the daughter and it
was some baby or something that he had acquired through his
(54:18):
serial killings, so. Maybe he killed them.
Oh my God, Jess, you and I must have been on the same wavelength
because I was like, did he kill someone and they found this baby
after murdering them and decidedto take care of it?
Like literally what is like yes I thought the exact same thing.
Yeah, perfect. So me and Jen are on the same
like morbid wavelength that absolutely.
(54:38):
We are on that path, Jess. We are on it.
We. Will have Leo DiCaprio pointing
out like the the milestones for us, it's our own movie.
That was not the case. We were half right.
That's not his child. Not at all.
Not even a little. Not even a little bit.
I I just think that it was all jumbled and garbled and it, I
(55:02):
think the movie is up to interpretation in a lot of
instances. And if you are the type of movie
goer who's like that intrigues you, that thrills you to put the
pieces together how you see fit,then great.
If you're like a couple of us onthis panel that are just like.
You can just say my name. Jen OK, OK, you're like Jen and
(55:26):
you need some answers. Then this movie might not land
as much with you. And both ways are fine.
You can see 3 1/2 sold your bottles.
It didn't kill Jen. It was fine.
I survived. You survived.
Did you guys have anything else you wanted to add about our
discussion of Memoir of a Murderer?
(55:48):
Because I feel like I've come tothe end of my mental notes.
I didn't take a single note for this movie, by the way, just
running on fumes. Just going just going on
instinct. Going on instinct.
No, no, I think we covered it. I mean, yeah, I think we covered
it. I think just to kind of yes.
And to what you said as the person who needs a lot of
guideposts and these types of dramas and or movies, it is if
(56:12):
you are a person who enjoys the open-ended ending kind of thing
where you can like, you can sit around and like, like have
thousands of what ifs. This is, this is a great movie
for you because there are a bajillion what ifs in this
movie. So I would just add that.
Yeah. Just if you're a Kim Nem Gill
fan that you need to watch this,this needs to be part of your of
(56:35):
your library. Yeah, he's on hinge when he
takes his head off. I mean, that is a true highlight
of the movie. It really was.
I needed more of that. I was like I literally rewound
it and then paused it at certainpoints because I was like I need
to see this concave like I am truly.
Shocked. I know the beginning of the
(56:57):
film. He's holding a kitten.
By the end of it, he's building.He's removing his head.
Yeah. And it just was so out of left
field. It was so random.
It was so random. Like, what?
Yeah. Like, why?
Yeah. Why do we have to have a reason
for him to be psychotic? Like he's psychotic because he
(57:18):
got bashed over the head with aniron.
With an iron, Yeah. The lesson of the movie is don't
abuse your children. Don't abuse nobody, right?
I will say this did you guys anddid no one else like this is
this is again me wanting like some sort of like connection.
Didn't as soon as that iron cameout when they were fighting in
(57:40):
the end, I expected the daughterto pick that iron up and take
him out with the iron and the fact that that was just left
dangling there. I was like, I felt like that was
pretty obvious. It was right.
It was right there. Right there, low head, low
hanging fruit. I will say I was a little bit
more disturbed about the obviousage gap between the daughter who
(58:01):
was still in school and this man.
Like he's a police officer man with a full time job and he's
over here messing with a little.Kitten.
He had a kitten. Yeah.
I was like, that's the thriller right there.
That's right, The Scary Movie. Yeah, right.
(58:22):
Fine. Yeah.
No, Absolutely, yeah. All right, thank you guys so
much for watching this movie andrewatching it.
Marissa, I know that those planeride movies, they'll get you
every time, but where can peoplefind you guys online in case
they don't follow you guys or subscribe to your YouTube?
You can find us on YouTube. You can actually find us
(58:45):
everywhere at the K30 spell it out the KTHREE.
We are on Instagram, we're on Twitter, I refuse to call it X,
and we are on YouTube and those are that's where you can find
us. Nice.
Thank you guys again, this was ablast to do.
Always a good time. Thank you.
Jess yes. And I hope that the rest of your
(59:06):
spooky season and the rest of your year goes wonderfully
swimmingly. And that's it.
That's been our show. I'm Jessica, and this has been
the Tiba K Rambo's podcast.
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